WashPo Columnist Blusters Over Al-Qaida Weakness – Obama’s Going To Save Us

Never one to run from a fist fight, I got into one at high school following the last class on a late Spring day of my sophomore year.  My opponent, a short, flabby, mouthy kid, and I walked out to the athletic field.  He’d been relentlessly provoking me to fight for several months and I’d finally had enough.  So, out we went to do battle, climbing the perimeter chain-link fence so as not to be caught settling our differences on the school grounds.

I was pretty confident I could give this kid the beating he’d been asking for.  I had a much longer reach than he did. I was stronger and in better physical condition than he was. I landed the first good punches, a few left jabs don’tcha know, and I raised a pretty good-sized red welt beneath his right eye.  Then I took my gaze from him for just a quick second to look over his right shoulder at a crowd of cheering student spectators who had gathered on the other side of the fence.  He knocked me out cold with an over-hand right (my friends told me later) that I never saw coming. Head aching, I sported a bruised and half-closed left eye for about a week.  Ever since that day I’ve had trouble getting air through the right side of my nose, especially at night when I go to sleep.

Over at The Washington Post, Dana Milbank published a column that is just dripping with hubris and bluster over our progress in the War.  Milbank believes that al-Qaida is pretty well flagging and close to being finished.  He’s asserting by ridicule that if the best that al-Qaida can do is the failed Christmas Day bombing attempt aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253, we don’t have much cause for concern.

There’s no existential threat here, folks.  Millbank considers that failed attack, and the successful December 30 bombing that killed seven of our C.I.A. agents in Khost, Afghanistan to be “nuisance” terrorism. Tell that to the deceased agents’ families.  Millbank is dead wrong.  This War is far from being finished.  Clueless about Islam and the history of the three great waves of jihad, he also had to get in the obligatory left-wing shot at how the Bush Administration overestimated the threat we face from al-Qaida.

Here it is:

“…It’s okay to call Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab the Underbomber, or even the Tighty-Whitey Terrorist. It’s okay to call his explosive-bearing undergarment the Jihad Jockeys or the Frighty Whities or Fruit of the Boom. It’s okay to laugh…

…If this is the worst al-Qaeda can do, we’re in good shape…

Yes, it’s bad that U.S. authorities missed all the red flags and let Abdulmutallab get so close to success…But the dismay of the past two weeks misses a larger point: that the nature of the attack shows just how lame al-Qaeda really is…

…In part, we overestimated (or, in the case of the Bush administration, perhaps exaggerated) the threat from al-Qaeda. In part, the post-Sept. 11 efforts to strengthen the borders (?) and disrupt terrorist operations have worked…

Last time I checked, the fence between the U.S. and Mexico has not been built.

… Whatever the cause, al-Qaeda is now less an organization than a bunch of loosely affiliated cells…These cells are capable of inflicting plenty of pain, as a suicide bomber’s killing of seven Americans at a CIA base in Afghanistan last month reminded us. But they do not pose an existential threat to the United States…

…Keeping al-Qaeda to this level of “nuisance” terrorism should be the goal…

…But it’s more important to redirect some of this frenzy over the underwear bomb to where it really matters: keeping nuclear materials away from terrorists.

The president has pledged to do this, and he’s gathering some 40 heads of state in Washington in April…Their goal should be to secure remaining nuclear material before al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda-like groups can get to it, and to end the civilian use of highly enriched uranium…”

Aha.  Now we’re getting to it.  Obama’s going to save us from the  jihad by confiscating all of the world’s enriched nuclear material.  I should have known.

I am not given to quoting Biblical scripture, but one profound sentence just might be appropriate here:

“Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”  You can Google it if you want to.

This War has raged and receded since Muhammad’s death in 632 A.D.  Jihad is as eternal as Islam.  Dana Millbank and others who believe as he does have greatly misjudged our enemy’s determination and abilities.